Sunday, February 20, 2011

Better, wiser people

My mother did the best she could, I suppose. I need to do the best I can do. So I tell my children everything they want to know. I show them the world in words and pictures and music. While they're becoming better, wiser people, I am too. I wish I had learned these things before they were born, but I didn't have my teachers yet. I have tried to pass on to other moms the best of what works well for us, and to put little warning beacons near pitfalls.

4 comments:

I'm certain that my mom did the best that she could. Her childhood was godawful and mine was not, though I could wish it to have been better. I do think everyone is doing their best in any given moment -- our children, ourselves, our parents, the neighbors who I think are blowing it with their unconscious parenting. In that moment when I'm reactive and thoughtless, I simply can't do any better, that is the best I'm capable of, it feels to me, and usually I can see why I behaved so, when I think back on it. The fascinating question to me is what makes some people wake up, what gives some people the ability and drive to work at self-awareness, and others not, or at least not yet. I wish I had learned all that I am learning and more before becoming a parent (as if that were even possible. How would I have learned without living it?) but I suspect that is just more of my resistance to failing and making mistakes that can keep me from learning and doing something complex and challenging, and I try not to stay in that thinking too long.

Are you saying that you think people *choose* to behave reactively and unskillfully? In my experience, when I am reactive and dysfunctional, I am not making a conscious choice to be that way.If you mean that people do not always behave rationally, compassionately and functionally, I certainly agree, but I would still say that this is the best they can manage in the moment, given their conditioning and whatever self-awareness skills they possess.